The purpose of the proposed project is to examine the origins of parental attributions for their children's behavior and the extent to which parents' overt interpretations of their young children's mental and emotional states are associated with children's understanding of their own and others' mental and emotional states. The question is of importance to the mental health of children for two primary reasons. First, parental attributions are known to influence parents' emotions and behavior, and negative attributional styles are associated with harsh parenting and child abuse. Secondly, children's social competence and long-term psychosocial adjustment, which depend on their representations of social situaitons and relationships, may be heavily influenced by parental attributions and descriptions of children's mental and emotional states in the early tears. For this study, 120 mothers and fathers of 4- and 5-years-old children will be interviewed about their demographic and family backgrounds, their attitudes toward parenting, and their attributions for their children's behavior, and they will be observed with their children in a game designed to elicit talk about positive and negative emotional states. Children will be assessed on three different social cognitive tasks and a measure of language. It is predicted that parents who attribute their children's misbehavior to situational rather than dispositional causes, and who talk coherently about emotional and mental states with their children will have children who demonstrate advanced social cognitive skills. The results will contribute substantially to our knowledge about the role of parental attributions in children's developing social awareness and competence.